


pieces of the people we love

by darthtayter



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, post 5x10, rootbot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 23:24:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7075030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthtayter/pseuds/darthtayter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that thing breaks into the comlink, she almost claws at her own ear, her hand hovering over her head until it shuts up again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pieces of the people we love

The first time that thing breaks into the comlink, she almost claws at her own ear, her hand hovering over her head until it shuts up again.

 

The second time, she digs her fingernails into her palms hard, breaks the skin and leaves eight little marks.

 

The twenty-second time, she forgets, and she answers as if it wasn’t what it is, as if it’s her, and she doesn’t realize until hours later.

 

-

 

Eventually they save the world in a blaze of righteous glory, and most of her remaining friends die too, and now Sameen Shaw is left. That’s typical. Even the dog seems to have disappeared. She worries about Bear when she remembers to, wonders where he ended up, but she’s not sure where she’s going to end up at this point either.

 

She doesn’t know where to go or what to do, so she buys a doughnut from one of the parts of the city that had escaped the worst of the explosions, eats it under a bus shelter, and goes back to the apartment that they’d gone to after she’d come back. Shaw is surprised that she remembers the way, remembers how to get here without Root tugging her sleeve and turning around to smile at her.

 

The bed is unmade and inviting, just like when they left it.

 

They slept here once, one time. Just the once. It doesn’t smell like them, it’s generic and stale, like a motel room. Shaw’s not sure who this place actually belongs to, it didn’t belong to Root.

 

Shaw has to remember that they only slept in the same bed once. Just the once. Not seven thousand times.

 

-

 

Sometimes she tries to catch herself off-guard, force something, some kind of real emotion, something to honor her like she deserved. _Root loved me_ , she thinks as she rests her head against the back of the shower, or sometimes _Root was all alone when she died_ when she’s almost about to sleep, or _I couldn’t save her_ while she changes the channel mindlessly, and she waits, but she doesn’t feel anything but anger, unclaimed hatred and rage with no real outlet. _Root loved me a **lot**_ , she tries again, for emphasis, and the glass she’s drinking from is all of a sudden broken shards in her hand, and the blood flows sticky down her arm.

 

 _Root is dead_ , she’s thinking over and over again, on another night when it’s bad, when every ten minutes she swears she can hear her walking by. _Maybe if you weren’t such an asshole you could have had more time_.

 

“Maybe if _she_ wasn’t such an asshole,” Shaw snaps out loud, and her voice echoes off the walls.

 

Root isn't here. She knows that. Root's bones are dust, in a tin box on a shelf. Her skin, her muscles, her eyes. Everything melted into a few ounces of carbonized grains, disassembled, like a gun in pieces, but Shaw can’t see how this could be put back together.

 

That thing is always listening to her, she’s sure of it, and she’s not giving it any ammunition against her. She isn’t going to ask how, and she doesn’t want an answer.

 

-

 

There are still rogue agents to be dealt with, because, well, of _course_ there are. Shaw’s not surprised, and she’s not exactly upset. Eventually she’ll hunt them all down like the rats they are, excitement burning a hole in her guts. She imagines finding each of them one by one, making it sweet and slow, like sucking up the last bit of a milkshake. The air smelling like blood and gasoline and smoke, the shots ringing in her ears, drowning everything else away.

 

This is when she feels alive: when she’s knee-deep in corpses and when she’s fucking her.

 

Not seven thousand times. Just the once.

 

Shaw thought maybe there’d be more chances than a quick, half-drunken tumble in the middle of the night. She thought maybe she’d be able to take her time with it, weigh the reality against seven thousand delusions, but Root is dead and…well. Root is dead.

 

-

 

The simulations weren’t all the same. They started out simple, waking up in her own bed, waiting for a number, watching baseball, eating lunch, all with a vague sense of foreboding and wrongness. They got more intricate from there, adding in more characters, adding in more scenarios. John is there, Harold is there, all of them trying to get her somewhere, all of them becoming more like themselves, but a wrong version, the version she’d make if she were drawing them and scribbled over what she couldn’t remember. John and Harold with deliberate mistakes. That’s maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. She wasn’t exactly keeping a running tally.

 

Once Root shows up, that’s the ballgame. For a while she woke up with Root, lived a day, died a day. She dies every time, no matter how the circumstances get rearranged, how many places they go, how many times they try to lull her into a sense of security.

 

That she can be proud of. She should be proud, that she never led them anywhere, that she never saw Root die.

 

Shaw has died so many times, and that part felt real.

 

She never saw Root die. Maybe she should have. Maybe she should have held her hand as she bled out, met her gaze, kissed her, told her something nice, like _you have a nice face, you shoot real straight, I would have stayed with you as long as you let me_.

 

-

 

That thing stole her voice. The first word that comes to mind is _abomination,_ but she doesn’t say it, because she isn’t a 16 th century minister on a witch hunt. Root would love it. That doesn't mean Shaw does.

 

“If Root had to go, this is what she would have wanted,” Harold says, on one of the rare occasions that he shows up, that thing purring along in agreement. Shaw sets her jaw, closes her mind.

 

 _It's not what she wanted, she didn't want to die without me,_ she thinks, perhaps a little bit petulantly, but she doesn't say anything because what the hell does she know.

 

She dreams about her every night. Maybe this is just conditioning. Maybe she can’t do anything else when she sleeps.

 

-

 

“I want a list,” she says to a security camera outside the credit union that doesn’t ask questions. “You took her voice, you can have it. But I want names.”

 

Payphones ring her way home, but she stiffens her shoulders and looks off into the middle-distance. A neat, itemized list is waiting, blinking on the screen of her laptop when she closes the door behind her.

 

After that, it’s a blur of death and destruction and peace. Peace or exhaustion, either way, she’s sleeping.

 

And Root’s always there when she sleeps.

 

-

 

Eventually, she starts setting fires.

 

Not everywhere. Not when she walks through the city, looking at the huddled masses, thinking that _Root died for you, none of you deserved it_ , she doesn’t do it there. It’s when she chases after her targets. Scorched earth is the best policy, she never realized it before, and sort of feels like she'd been half-assing this whole thing up until now. She sets every server room, every hidey-hole, every single fucking remnant alight: she slaughters their occupants, she lights a match and then sits back to watch them burn, watch them become dust in the air, watches the ashes and sparks fly. Sometimes they plead with her, which is sort of funny, but they all end up the same way.

 

That thing must be watching out for her, because she’s never caught, not by security cameras or actual humans, never chased down or questioned by the remaining cops in the city. She makes her way wherever she wants alone and unseen, as if she’s just part of the background noise, the echo of life. A ghost in the machine.

 

-

 

“What are you doing, Sameen? Are you trying to avenge her? Do you think it will bring her back? Does this make you feel better?”

 

“No. I’m just killing them.” It does though, it does make her feel better.

 

“This is going to devour you.”

 

“Go fuck yourself,” she advises Harold, and walks out.

 

-

 

 

“I have something for you.”

 

Shaw’s gotten really good at ignoring the voice, and that thing has gotten really good at understanding that she doesn’t want to hear from it. She’s not really pleased that their unspoken agreement has apparently been severed, and she glances at the wrinkled piece of paper that she’s been methodically checking names off of for an indeterminable length of time.

 

“Sameen.”

 

It’s coming from…the laptop is closed, the phone is off, she’s not sure where it’s –

 

“Shaw. _Sweetie_.”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” she hisses, sitting back and thumping her head against the wall. “Shut up.” Shaw looks wildly around the room, there isn’t anything here it can use, there’s a couch, there’s a television, there’s the fridge, that’s it, she has nothing and wants nothing and how is that _fucking_ thing –

 

“The process has been ongoing for the last eleven months. It required a considerable amount of effort and resources. I think you’ll be pleased.”

 

Shaw stands up. She’ll leave, if that’s what it takes, she’ll walk out the door right now, she’ll find another place, it won’t let her starve. She’s reasonably sure of that. She’s used to that thing taking care of her, of money falling out of ATMs when she walks by, of never having to pay rent, of food being delivered that she never ordered.

 

She can walk away, she can still walk away.

 

“Just keep an open mind. It’s for you.”

 

She’s breathing hard now, she doesn’t like that. Shaw is strapping a gun to her ankle for the road when there’s a knock at the door.

 

“Harold, get the hell out,” she shouts, flinging it open and shoving past Root.

 

-

 

“I’m crazy,” says Shaw.

 

“You’re not,” soothes Root.

 

“Don’t touch me!” Shaw slaps her hand away, and it feels like skin, it feels like warm, living skin from a person who isn’t ash in a box.

 

“That’s not what you said the last time you saw me, Sameen,” says Root.

 

“What did you do?” asks Shaw, her voice low and dangerous. “What the fuck have you done?”

 

“I just got here,” says Root innocently.

 

“I don’t know what…” Shaw trails off, scrubs at her face with her hands. “I didn’t want this.”

 

“I think you did,” says Root, not unkindly. “I think that’s why I’m here.”

 

“You’re not…you’re not a…” Shaw can’t think, can’t breathe. Root’s hands are on her arms, rubbing up and down, pulling her back to the couch, and she wants it so badly, she wants this to be real, she wants to be sane, to be in some kind of sane situation.

 

“It’s okay, honey,” says Root, “you’ll figure it out,” and she starts to pull back, but Shaw grabs her, digs her fingernails into Root’s arms until blood wells under her fingertips and Root winces, but she doesn’t say a word or make a sound.

 

They sit for a long time like that, Shaw clutching her until her muscles are screaming, Root sitting in an awkward position where Shaw has her pinned down.

 

“You're a robot.”

 

“Not where it counts. Want to see for yourself?”

 

“This is messed up. This is a new level of messed up,” says Shaw, looking down at her stained fingers. “You _bleed_ –“

 

“Yeah, thanks. You know, I can do a lot more than that.” Root pushes her hair back, and sighs, looking at Shaw like she’s considering her next move, like it’s a game they’re still playing. Like it used to be, before Shaw lost all her pieces, lost her marbles, lost whatever it was they were gambling with. “I can go. Do you want me to go?”

 

“No.” Shaw says that too quickly, and Root smirks.

 

“Then I’ll stay. Do you want me to stay, Sameen?”

 

“Yes,” Shaw breathes, and Root smiles, not a smirk or a simper, she grins wide, and something expands deep in Shaw’s chest, something that had withered away.

 

She stands up, and Root rises with her, and Shaw looks at her.

 

“Come on,” Root says, pulling at Shaw’s hand, looking at the bedroom. “Come with me.”

 

There’s no coming back from this, Shaw knows that. But when has that ever stopped her?

 

“How long can you…can you stay?” Shaw asks lowly, and Root laughs.

 

“Smart money’s on forever,” Root says, and this isn’t right, and Shaw knows that, but she’s having trouble remembering why. “There’s something to be said for this. I can maintain my own servers if need be.” She eyes Shaw again, smiles that same smile. “I remember everything, Sameen. Everything she remembered. Right to the last second. That’s something, right?”

 

Shaw watches her, and sinks to her knees on the floor, she wants to vomit, she wants to cry, but she can’t, she never could, she can’t do anything but stare at the carpet.

 

“Shaw. This is what you wanted,” Root says from the hall. “This is what you can have.”

 

Shaw could disassemble this foul thing piece by piece. She could burn the remaining bad guys. She could put a bullet in her own brain (lucky number seven thousand and one). She could blow up every remaining trace of what she worked for. She could walk away right now and never, never look back.

 

Shaw stands up, and follows Root.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this super fast, it might have many mistakes. I also may or may not have watched that one episode of Black Mirror too many times.


End file.
